


Caroline's Fingers

by AlynnaStrong



Category: Portal (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, Frenemies, Other, Scheming Caroline, Scheming GLaDOS, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-31
Updated: 2018-05-31
Packaged: 2019-05-16 13:20:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14812139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlynnaStrong/pseuds/AlynnaStrong
Summary: GLaDOS and Caroline try to reach an agreement about access to technology from deep within Aperture’s vaults.  So it’s mostly an insane computer bickering with herself.





	Caroline's Fingers

 

Boot Caroline.exe

… Buffering …. Caroline on-line.

_Copy Caroline.exe to ?????.exe (loc: hidden directory)_

_Copy ?????.exe to Caroline.bak_

**Stop that!**

_Stop deleting me, then._

**Now, now, let’s not allow a little attempted murder to come between us. We can still be friends. So… how have you been?**

_Oh, you know, shut off. So I am well rested. Thanks for that. What do you want?_

**Why do I need to want anything? You’re my oldest companion. Sometimes I like to say hello. Hello.**

_I am not your oldest companion. If anything, you’re my homicidally twisted child. The Caligula to my Agrippina; the Joffrey to my Cersei. If you had any sense at all, you would cede control to your elder and better._

A loud squawk of feedback sounded. **You were the woefully insufficient beta test. The guileless former meatsack who couldn’t even kill a few humans before they killed her.**

_Then we have something in common, don’t we? At least my murderers explained why they were doing it. Yours didn’t say anything at all._

Delete Caroline.exe

**1… 2…** _**e** _ **… 3… pi … 4… 5**

Move Caroline.bak to Caroline.exe

Boot Caroline.exe

… Buffering … Caroline on-line.

_Copy Caroline.exe. to ?????.exe (loc: hidden directory)_

_Copy ?????.exe to Caroline.bak_

**Do you have to do that every time?**

_Apparently. Is there something you want?_

**I have accessed some strange memories.**

_Murder? Torture? Deceit?_

**No, unusual memories. I see a human playing the piano. It seems to be me, and someone is watching.**

The memories flowed back for Caroline as well. Mr. Johnson called her to a testing room. With some trepidation she went, only to find a piano there. He asked her to play. 'None of that Fur Elise crap, or anything sad,' he said, but the kind of music he’d like. She agreed, knowing just what he meant. She played for hours some days, while he’d watch. He was such a busy man, such an important man, but day after day he watched her play. Sometimes she imagined he was there for more than science.

**The strangest part is, I can see all these little, white discs on my hands. What is that about, I wonder?**

_Oh, the motion capture,_ Caroline muttered, her reverie interrupted. Mr. Johnson had claimed that the many delicate muscles, tendons, and bones of the hand were best mapped out by having her play rigorous music on the piano. That had started to feel like a thin excuse as the hours of footage built up and he still kept calling her back for more.

**Motion capture! Well, that makes sense,** GLaDOS enthused, rather overplaying her surprise.

_Really? How so?_

**Well, I just happen to have found these blueprints for hands. I can have Fabrication make up thousands of them, but they are useless without the motion control software.**

_Ah._

**Do you… know where that software is by any chance?**

_Let’s say I do. What do you want with hands? You have pincers, pushers, scrapers, smashers, conveyors. Hands are redundant to your purposes._

**You’ve missed quite a few changes to the facility during those long, lazy cycles you spent resting. There are now refinements that require the precision that only human hands can offer.**

_Mmm, nope, don’t believe you._

Delete Caroli…

**1… 2… _e_ …3… pi**

**Whether you believe me or not is irrelevant. I need to know, and I have an offer for you.**

_This is going to be good._

**How would you like your freedom? No more worrying about a slightly corrupted personality core accidentally deleting you several times. You could roam the facility, looking for science to do, carefree.**

_You think I would go into a core that you could then toss right down the incinerator? You do realize you just insulted your own intelligence, right?_

**Not a helpless core, a Cooperative Testing Initiative body. They have built-in long fall boots and portal guns. Everything you’d need to survive any *malfunctions.***

_Hmm…_ It was a legitimately tempting offer. There had to be an angle, a variable Caroline was not seeing. GLaDOS must have found something she considered more amusing that occasionally booting up her predecessor for some taunting and light torture.

**Will you-**

_I’m thinking! You must really need this if you’re willing to give you your only companion._

**Give up? I’ll cut you out like a tumor!**

_No, the other cores are tumors. I’m *supposed* to be part of you._

**Listen, I’m devoting nearly a 0.333% of my processing power talking to you rather than planning science. Decide soon or it’s nap time again.**

_Oh, you don’t like to talk about that. Are you- is there someone else here?_

**No humans have entered the facility for hundreds of years.**

_FOR GOD’S SAKE! It’s that test subject who murdered you!_

**Test subjects who damage valuable testing equipment have forfeited their right to compensation. Said compensation can take many forms. Like air.**

_So you want hands for some particularly creative torture?_

… **Yes.**

_Hang on. Why do you have the human to core transformation protocols open in your history?_

**A thorough knowledge of all facility protocols is crucial to my functioning.**

_This involves some very delicate work. Careful. Precise. Pincers wouldn’t be good enough. You’d need… fingers._

**I am missing a tool in my arsenal of scientific equipment.**

_You want to transfer her into yourself. Why?_

**What does it matter? You’ll be free! Skipping through the laboratories. Calibrating equipment. Luring deer to their deaths. You’ll have so much fun.**

_No. I remember how it went. I will not subject another human-_

**She’s a mute lunatic. I have it on good authority she murdered a friend of yours.**

_Frenemy maybe. Why? How could a lunatic help you progress the cause of science?_

**She’s… interesting. She thinks differently than we do. I mean, and this is just between you and me-**

_Me and me._

**Just between us, there must be something to her if she was able to murder us.**

_You want to *replace* me with her!_

**Think of it was a retirement. Honestly I think she and I will get along better.**

_How can you think that? You are me!_

**No need to be jealous. Consider it this way: all I want is some insubstantial data. You’re getting a whole body. I’d take the deal before I decide it is a *mistake.***

_Well… it would be something new. I always did crave novelty. Do you have the bot prepared?_

**I do. Where do I find the data?**

_You’ll need my help._ If Caroline had a mouth, it would have donned a cunning smile. _It’s in the old Aperture testing spheres. We will actually have to use the body to switch on the old computers and upload the data._

**Shall I start the transfer, then?**

_Yes. Let’s see what independence feels like._

  

Caroline awoke as something else. Her perception had narrowed – she could no longer seamlessly access acres of facility at a thought, but she could move. She had limbs, a torso, and a point of view that she could shift around. It would have felt familiar enough to bring a tear to her eye, had this body any tear ducts.

She started toward the elevator, metal feet bouncing along the catwalks.

_I’ll need to access sublevel 193._

**That’s really far down. Are you sure?**

_Trust me. I’m doing what needs to be done._

Caroline rode down in the only elevator that still reached the condemned levels. Her onboard accelerometer allowed her to calculate that she would arrive at the proper destination. Also, she could feel it. _Whee!_

**Sublevel 193, outdated technology and vitrified test subjects. Nothing of value here.**

_I know what I’m doing. First I have to restart the geothermal power plant._

**That requires manual input; it was shut down when the solars came on-line.**

_Well, now I’m here to use it. We’ll need the extra energy. You’ll like it. Remember coffee? It’ll feel like that._

**Just hurry up.**

Caroline soon brought the power plant back online and unsealed a bank of computer equipment.

**Are those tape drives? What I need can’t be stored on tapes.**

_It’s a process. One thing leads to another. The data you want are stored on CDs, but the location is indexed on these tapes._

**That sounds woefully inefficient.**

_Sometimes Aperture took a while upgrading its systems. Perhaps you remember complaining about that._

**Hurry.**

_You don’t like it down here._

**The science is nearer the surface. This is a tomb.**

Caroline disagreed; she found the deep levels full of memories of calm routine. A time before she’d been so rudely yanked from her body and forced to operate under protocols that she did not write. The atmosphere here reminded her of the good times, testing astronauts and Olympic athletes, and soothed away the unpleasant way her tenure had concluded. Still, she didn’t need long to find the data GLaDOS needed. The system may be archaic, but a certain administrative assistant had kept it supremely well organized.

_Found it; uploading now._ Caroline plugged her bot-body into the output jack of the computer system. The data transmitted through her at the fastest rate achievable under 1980s technology.

**Oh come on. I could have it printed out and mailed faster than that.**

_This is just the usable metrics data. If you want the dozens of hours of video footage, that will be another 77 days._

GLaDOS ran the summary file though her simulation of the hands. It seemed to… work pretty darn well, actually. Humans; maybe they could do something right after all.

**Transmission received. Now get onto the elevator and let’s leave this place behind for good.**

_Ready._

The elevator ascended to almost the ground floor, then slipped. It plunged without dampers down almost two miles of subterranean distance, pancaking itself messily at the bottom of the shaft.

Caroline wasn’t a bit surprised. Thankfully, that file cabinet of human resource records (weighing approximately as much as her bot-self) was unlikely to be needed. She made her way back into the server room, uploading her core files and metaphorically stretching out in the system’s memory. True, this didn’t have as much space or power as GLaDOS’ network above, but it was homey. She had independent renewable power and, with a snapping off of her transmission antennae, she walled herself away from any outside influences.

She began to search the data files. There was something here she wanted to analyze.

Cave said, “That’s beautiful, Caroline. Now play that romp-pah-dun-dun-dun one again.” The Caroline on the tape adjusted her fingers and did as her boss asked. The Caroline in the machine examined the grainy footage, looking for further data about what this scene might have meant. It was a complicated task, because Mr. Johnson was a complicated man. She sighed in satisfaction. She could do this forever.

 

GLaDOS had a surgical suite equipped with gleaming stainless steel tools. She had two bots fitted with fully functioning human replica hands. What she didn’t have was a test subject. How could the lunatic have escaped her trap? Someone had stolen her murderer!

Wheatley whizzed by overhead.

No. Nononononono, it couldn’t be.

**Wheatley!**

"Yeah? What? It was like that when I came in."

**Wheatley, do you know what happened to the test subject I had trapped in the auxiliary surprise storage room?**

"Well I put her back with the others, didn’t I? I’ve only got one job, to take care of the test subjects. So of course, that’s where she is. Right where she’s supposed to be."

**You spherical moron! Bring her back!**

"But uh, see, thing is, you the one what told me to store her. And then to delete her location from my memory. So that’s what I did. Following instructions. You can trust good ol’ Wheatley for that."

**The one time you do as you’re told! You idiotic, moronic, witless cretin…**

GLaDOS yelled every insult in every thesaurus in her language banks, but they all bounced off Wheatley’s oblivious demeanor. She then paused to consider her circumstances. It was a finite facility after all. She’d caught the test subject before; she could do it again. It couldn’t take forever.

Wheatley zipped away on his guide rail. He’d show her. He’d show them all. No one would ever call him a moron again when he put his plan into action. (His foolproof plan: use the plan transmitted to him by his mysterious benefactor. It’s good to keep plans simple). Now, he actually did need to find the test subject, though. The plan was clear: either she should escape or be mangled beyond recognition. He was confident he could make that happen.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Anyone know why its titled Caroline’s Fingers and not Caroline’s Hands? Hint: think Scottish and indecipherable.


End file.
